When writers were rock stars ...

In June 1880 Fyodor Dostoevsky delivered a speech at the Moscow Pushkin Festival on the occasion of the unveiling of the Pushkin Monument. With some help from contemporaneous accounts and from Dostoevsky himself, Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky's biographer, tells the story of the reaction to that speech:

The effect of this speech on the audience was overwhelming, and the emotions it unleashed may be compared with the hysterical effusions typical of religious revival meetings. The memoirs of the period are full of its description, and we may begin with the image given by D. A. Lyubimov -- the son of Dostoevsky's editor and then still a young student -- of its finale. "Dostoevsky pronounced the last words of his speech in a sort of inspired whisper, lowered his head, and in a deathly silence, began rather hurriedly to leave the podium. The hall seemed to hold its breath, as if expecting something more. Suddenly from the back rows rang out a hysterical shriek, 'You have solved it!' [the secret of Pushkin], which was taken up by several feminine voices in chorus. The entire auditorium began to stir. You could hear the shrieks, 'You solved it! You solved it!' a storm of applause, some sort of rumbling, stamping, feminine screeches. I do not think that the walls of the Hall of Moscow Nobility either before or since had ever resounded with such a tempest of ectasy."

Dostoevsky's own account to Anna of his spectacular success cannot be equaled in communicating the excitement of the moment:

'Everything that I said about Tatyana was received with enthusiasm. (This is the great triumph of our idea over twenty-five years of delusions.) When I spoke at the end, however, of the universal unity of people, the hall was as though in hysteria. When I concluded -- I won't tell you about the roar, the outcry of rapture, strangers among the audience wept, sobbed, embraced each other, and swore to one another to be better, not to hate one another from now on, but instead to love one another. The order of the meeting was violated; everyone rushed toward the platform to see me, highborn ladies, female students, state secretaries, students -- they all hugged me and kissed me. All the members of our society [the SLRL] who were on the platform hugged me and kissed me. All of them, literally all of them, wept from delight. The calls continued for half an hour; people waved handkerchiefs; suddenly, for instance, two old men whom I didn't know stopped me: 'We had been enemies to one another for twenty years, hadn't spoken to one another, but now we have embraced and been reconciled. It's you who reconciled us, you, our saint, our prophet!' 'Prophet, prophet' people in the crowd shouted.

Turgenev, for whom I put in a good word in my speech, rushed to embrace me with tears. Annenkov ran up to shake my hand and kiss my shoulder. 'You're a genius, you're more than a genius!' they both told me. Aksakov (Ivan) ran up onto the platform and declared to the audience that my speech was not just a speech, but a historic event! A thundercloud had been covering the horizon, and now Dostoevsky's speech, like the sun coming out, had dissipated everything, illuminated everything. Beginning now, brotherhood had arrived and there would no longer be any perplexity. 'Yes, yes!' everyone cried and again embraced and again there were tears. The meeting was broken up. I rushed to the wings to escape, but everyone from the hall burst in there, and mainly women. They kissed my hands, tormented me. Students came running in. One of them, in tears, fell to the floor before me in convulsions and lost consciousness. A complete, absolutely complete victory!'

-- Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-1881